Like Lovers
by sister dark
Summary: George Realizes he's suddenly become the other man. CH 5 is up George and izzy find themselves in the middle of the night. SMUT!Rated: R or whatever that corresponds with in this new ratings format please review!
1. next to you

Title: Like Lovers

Author: Finch

Characters: George and Izzy

A/N: So this is my attempt at a George and Izzy fic, this is just the first installment, so please comment, I live for them!

I own nothing, so ABC, don't sue me, I'm broke enough as it is! I'm in college for god's sake, I can give you nothing but my computer, microwave, and possible a box of KD.

Its all your fault.

I mean, if it weren't for your eyes, it wouldn't have been so hard. If I hadn't ever seen you laugh, or cry, or with icing on your nose from licking the spatula, it would have never happened.

It wouldn't have ever happened if I never knew you.

I should have been able to control myself. Maybe it would have never gotten so far if your hair didn't fall into your eyes, or you didn't walk around in your under-wear. If you didn't act like such a young thing, so full of every moment, and feeling every pang of hurt so strongly. Maybe if you didn't depend on me so much. And maybe if I didn't depend on you like I do.

This is so criminal.

I wish I could stay here forever, my arm hugging you around your waist, so small. With you, curled around me, one leg draped lazily over mine, your hand clutching mine to your cheek as you sleep, breathing small, shallow breaths, your cheeks pink, and your hair, god, it's just like the color gold should be, do you know that?

But you're starting to wake up. You're shifting, moving closer, moving farther, taking your hand from mine, and I know what you'll say when you open you're eyes, and realize you're still here.

You'll ask me to keep it just between us. Ask me not to tell anyone, especially him. Truthfully, I can't help but be scared of it all sometimes. All of it, all of this – _This – _all this feeling I feel when I'm with you. And how lonely I feel when its not there.

Outside its raining. Soft staccato murmuring sounds, and it makes it all feel so still. Its washing it all away, this night, this amazing night.

"Jesus Izzy," I sighed, pulling you tighter, just for an instant, trying to catch your warmth, trying to catch the last sentient parts of last night, parts of you, the grasping, clenching, hungry parts, where you were soft, and sharp and truthful, and I wanted – needed – every bit, all of it I took greedily.

You shift, and the curve of your cheek moves into the hollow of my throat, the crown of your head under my chin. I sigh again, softer, and trace the line of your cheek with my thumb.

"Jesus Izzy." I murmur.

Does he love you?

Do you love him?

But what the hell do I know. Last night, all of this, I forgot myself. You will never leave Alex for me.

Because what am I? he's smooth, I? am awkward. He's complicated, and full of brooding-ness. And I am pretty much just George.

And that's pretty much why you'll never leave him for me. And that's ok. Because I'm not supposed to like you anyways. I'm supposed to be head over heels for Meredith, and you, as lovely as you are, don't fit the criteria.

Maybe if your hair was darker.

Or your eyes were wider.

Maybe then I could love you.

And maybe then you could love me too.

And tell you the truth, even after you wake up, I'd do it all again. All of this mess.

Because you should be mine. Because I'd be lying to myself if I said I wasn't yours.

Your eyes are fluttering, and suddenly you're awake, and you untangle yourself as carefully as you can, tugging the sheets against your nakedness, and I'm so tempted by the stray lock of blond hair that caresses the hollow of your neck, I can't take my eyes off it.

_Go for it._

_Go for it._

So I do.

I balance my weight on my elbow, rolling on my side, half on top, one hand grazing the skin of your collar bone – not even trembling, not even scared, because I know what's coming, and I know I'd best collect while I have the chance – my hand moves upwards, and I look into your eyes, they're wide, surprised, blue.

My hand cradles your neck as I tilt your face upward, as I lower my own to it, lips just barely touching, so slow – infinitely slow, and then, I feel your body arch, and I feel my own sink, and I can't help it any longer – my lips crash onto yours, hard, passionate, full of everything I want to say but can't, everything I want to tell you, but you don't want to hear, and you open your mouth, and I invade it, my tongue brushing over your teeth, across the roof of your mouth, and I feel your hand snake around the back of my neck, into my hair, pulling me down, deeper into you, drowning me, and I know I'll never breathe again, unless you're there.

One more instant, and I lift myself up, throw off the covers, and pull on my boxers silently. I know you're sitting there, wondering what just happened, and that's ok. I can deal with that.

"I know what you're gonna say, ok? So just – just…don't. You don't need to worry."

I zip up my jeans, button the fly, and throw my t-shirt over my shoulder, and walk to the door, opening it, and closing it without looking back. Because it hurts too much.

Hurts too much to see you, to talk to you like lovers do. To think of you like a lover. To know you as a lover when all you wanted was a friend for some comfort.


	2. Half gone

I think I need to get away.

I think I need something more real than off-white walls, broken hospital gurneys and fluorescent lighting that makes everything look dead and dying. Or maybe that's my own personal touch of morbid painting my vision.

Maybe its because I feel half gone already, half like I don't matter, half like I'm floating away.

And maybe this half gone feeling is the reason I'm taking the stairs, to feel the strain of my thighs, the burn in my calves, the constant, methodical plodding, keeping me on just this side of pain, just this side of _here._

And maybe that's why when I throw open the grey-blue painted steel door to the roof, I feel like I've fallen down, like I can feel every part of myself; the parts I know intimately, and the ones that hide in the darkened recesses of my self.

Like courage. Like hate…like regret.

The stars seem cold tonight, like ice-fire, burning fiercely. So cold – remote, so impenetrable. A wry half-smile touches my lips, and I feel like a jaded thirty-something, making metaphors with the stars, and searching for some honesty behind all the random hurts.

It's a rare thing, the stars coming out in Seattle. There are too many clouds, and too many city lights. So I'll take it for what it is. A rare night, where the wind blows cold, crisp with regret, and a hurt that keeps me here, connected, alive, instead of half gone.

Footsteps pad softly across the concrete. I don't want to turn.

I turn, leaning against the ledge.

"Hi." She says. Her voice is soft. Her eyes are large. She looks as if she's been crying. I wonder if they had another fight.

"Hi."

We stand there like that, three feet apart, and it feels so long. Distance and time stretch, and something has to fill the gap. She looks scared. And sad. And alone.

She's the picture of indecisive, and it's ironic, how we've switched places, how we can drift into roles when things are undone. She's biting her bottom lip, her hands shoved into the pockets of her lab coat.

She looks so sad. So alone.

"Jesus Izzy," I murmur, stepping forward, pushing off from the granite ledge, closing the infinite spaces between us, encompassed in three empirical feet.

"I'm so sorry George," She sobs into my chest, clutching me tight, not even air can fit in between us.

I smooth her hair, kiss her temple, wreath my arms around her, let her know she doesn't need to be so alone all the time.

"It's not your fault. It's not anybody's fault. Things just happened."

"I don't want us to be like this – not talking. I see you, and you walk away, and it makes me want to cry, because you're my best friend George – and Alex, god, I cheated on my boyfriend with my best friend! I'm not doing too good here." She hiccoughed, wiping her nose on my scrubs.

"oh, Izzy, it's gonna be ok, ok? Its not like you're interested in me anyways. Alex has nothing to worry about. And you don't even have to tell him. Things'll be ok. Its just crazy right now, for everyone."

I refrained from telling her how I'd seen her boyfriend making out with a scrub nurse in the change rooms, or how I'd seen the one female attending with her hair disheveled walking out of a closet, and then caught Alex a moment later, following, tying the drawstrings on his pants. I refrained from telling her, like I had the other ten times, and reminded myself that I was a coward.

But this time, something inside of me decided to do something about that.

Something inside of me couldn't refuse her tearstained cheeks, her full red lips, or her tortured expression. Something inside of me took her tiny face in my hands, and leaned forward, to draw it all away, all the poison that threatened all of what was Izzy, in a kiss.

Soft and tender and full of bright, sharp edges, and she felt like glass in his arms, so breakable.

Her hand, resting on his chest, pushed away softly as she stepped back, stepped away.

"We can't do this George."

Something inside of me decided to break the coward.

"We already have."

Her eyes grew large, and tentatively, she stepped backwards. She pivoted on her heel and ran.


	3. Someone's Sacrifice

A/N: so this is Izzy's point of view. I figured it was about time to get to her.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, aside from this computer, and you'll have to march over my dead body to get it!

Warnings: talk of rough sex. That's pretty much it. Its not too graphic. Oooh --- and another warning! DON"T RUN WITH SCISSORS!

IZZY'S POV

His hands are so demanding. Like he's going to take everything I'm willing to give, and maybe a little more, even though I don't quite know if I want to let him.

Our hip bones knock together, hard, painful. There'll be a bruise tomorrow. But to Alex, that's part of it all, that rough, angry, take – take – take. Because there's something Dickensian in his hooded eyes, something that needs to take, because whatever's being offered isn't enough to make up for what's been taken from him. That's why to Alex, everything is win or lose. So I give and give and give, and worry about the bruises tomorrow.

His hands are rough on my thigh, lifting me higher, pushing me open, like he wants to see what's inside of me, watch my heart beat, watch me give it all to him, watch my blood in my veins, and wonder, as his hands cinch themselves around my wrists, banging them against the wall, if I would bleed for him, if he could find some sort of redemption in me.

They say surgeons have a savior complex. We want to be the messiah, to play god. To breathe life back into dying things. I think that's true. I know it's true. You only have to look at an intern to know it. The thing is, this savior complex is like a virus – there's different strains, different variants. Christina's infected with ruthlessness, she'll save the hell out of you, and doesn't care what she has to do to get there. Meredith basks in the glory of it. She likes to be the golden girl. Alex, for some reason, wants redemption – needs it, needs to save lives like he needs to go to confession, like he needs to talk about what happened, but wont.

And then there's George. George is selfless, but afraid of giving in to that side that knows how to take control, the side that knows just what to do without questioning it, because George just wants to help people, and would never forgive himself if he pushed to hard, listened to a wrong instinct. What George doesn't know is that he doesn't have a wrong instinct if he would just let go of what holds him back.

"Fuck Izzy. Oh God," Alex breathes, warm, tickling my neck. He's calling out to God, but it's more of a curse, like he's saying "Fuck God" with every thrust. Not like George, who says "Jesus Izzy," in this reverent tone, strange and quite and it feels like an invocation more than some random coital whispering.

A violent tug looses my hair from it's already ruined pony-tail, and I throw aside the realization that I'm thinking about George while Alex is breathing hard against me, pushing against me, slick sweaty bodies, strung out in the heat of the moment: pushing and taking and gouging every feeling from me, until its done, and the bite mark on my shoulder is throbbing a little less under carelessly thrown on scrubs, until I can catch my breath, until I feel numb all over, except for my eyes. I can feel them pooling with tears, because no matter how much I give, and how much he takes, I can never get _there_, get to him, become one thing, instead of two separate entities.

And maybe he doesn't know what he's doing, blocking me out with every kiss, spurning me and pushing me farther with every attempt I make to get closer.

It makes me feel useless.

I flick the light switch as I exit, and the soft padding of hospital shoes on the floor suddenly stop. I look up, knowing I look like I've just had rough sex, and meet his eyes. It hurts to hurt him like this.

It hurts me even more.

I feel hollow, like a reed when the wind blows through, like I've been plunged into cold water. He looks like he wants to move to me, like he's daring me to move. Daring me to be who I could be, instead of who I am. And suddenly, I'm so ashamed. Ashamed that I know I'm not the redemption Alex is looking for, and I'm still trying, still holding onto that savior complex.

Ashamed that George knows it too. He blinks, and George looks as if he wants to do something, balanced on the edge of it, that terrible understanding.

"I wouldn't ask you for that." He murmurs, just loud enough for me to hear him. "But maybe that's why you're with him – maybe you think you need to be someone's sacrifice."

"I –" something pulls inside my chest, and it seems useless to lie. "I don't know."


	4. He looks best in the morning

Disclaimer: I own nothing. but I have high speed internet now, because my Daddy loves me!

A/N: sigh this is bittersweet. But I like it. It's a nice lead up to an eventual revelation. And, as the author, I promise some very, very hot George/Izzy smut in the following chapters. I will make it NC-17 if there is enough call for it, and put it up on the Grey's Fan-fiction archive. For those who want less graphic smut, I promise to write less graphic chapter versions for anyways, enjoy. I recommend listening to Rilo Kiley's "does he love you," while you read it.

He looks best in the morning. Looks best when his skin flushes, when he laughs. He looks best when he looks at me, looking at him, and he knows we shouldn't even be thinking it.

He looks best at three in the morning, asleep, and fearless, and full of dreams. At three in the morning, He's not lonely. And neither am I. He's making soft sounds into the pillow, and I lay on top of the covers, half wishing I could be underneath them, because it's cold in the night, and George likes the window open.

I shiver a little, and wonder why we shouldn't think it.

I try to come up with reasons why being here isn't right. Why it's wrong. Why I should tip-toe out of the room, and back into my own bed.

A bed where the most I can hope to take up is half, and I feel like I've been half of something for too long, half, and realizing I wasn't whole anymore. –Or that I never was.

Its almost easier, to be with Alex, and let him cut out pieces of me, because I know at some point, I'll almost be completely gone. Because there's nothing worse than being just half. And if I can't be whole, then I'd rather be nothing.

So why do I wake up, feeling scared and alone, and end up lying next to George?

He's turning over in his sleep, trying to find some purchase for his hands in the blanket, and he ends up grabbing my hand instead. I don't bother moving it away.

He's blinking at me, and I think he looks best like this, caught at three in the morning, still full of dreams, swimming in some place that's nearly lucid.

"Izzy?" he murmurs, realizing he has my hand. He's hesitant to drop it, I think. And I think I don't want him to.

"Hey."

"Hey."

A moment elapses, and it feels like the moon should be full, so I could see his face better in the dark. But its not, and that doesn't really matter anyways. I can see him.

And he can see me; see me for everything I love in myself, and everything I wish I could hide.

"I don't need it." I tell him, knowing he knows I'm talking about Alex, knowing its insomnia and confusion talking, "I don't think I need it. I think – I know I'm not, and that I can't, and that its stupid, but I want to – I don't know…"

"To save him."

"Yeah." I breathe. "But I want to save me too."

His hand's still in mine, and he squeezes gently, letting me know he gets it.

"Do you love him?"

and I thing about it. What is love – what does it mean to love someone? Is it sacrifice? Is it giving everything you have for that one person? Giving it unconditionally and gradually disappearing for that person?

I don't know. I don't know if that's love. Maybe its love if you don't care that you're disappearing, and they're just taking, and you're never getting anything of them to fill up the empty spaces.

And if that's true, I don't know.

"I don't know."

Is it love if you wonder if it's worth it?

He shifts, and his eyes gaze at the ceiling. He doesn't bother to ask if I love him.


	5. All Silver and Gold

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I have no money. If I did, I'd buy pots and pans for dorms.

A/N: so this is my smut chapter. To all you young'uns, please skip this chapter, its definitely R, (or whatever that corresponds to in this new rating thing…) to everyone else, enjoy the smut, I had fun writing it!

Robotica, this one's for you!

She doesn't know. I don't think she loves him.

If she loves him it wouldn't be like this when we touch – when we find each other in the middle of the night, it wouldn't feel all silver and gold and lucid.

So somehow, I know she doesn't love him. I know I love her, I need her, and I think…I think she needs me too. I think that she doesn't know how much yet.

Sometimes I try to talk to her, try to convince her to break it off with him, and not keep this thing secret. But she knows everything.

And for the life of me, I can't think why its so important not to compromise, why its so important that I have all of her, or none.

I can't remember why its so vital, when I can't live without her. I can't remember when she's like she is now, leaning against the door-frame in a baggy t-shirt, her hair half slung in a pony-tail, with the last glimmer of the day's make-up on.

Her hand goes to her throat, tugs the chain of her necklace, and falls. Her legs are long and coltish as she steps toward the bed.

Something compels me to move forward, to lose myself, to feel all silver and gold and lucid, because I might never have it again.

and George is there, so close to her they can feel the air eddy and swirl with each breath, feel it hot against exposed skin, and Izzy stops wondering why she needs to be here, needs to feel him against her and in her, and part of her. Izzy stops wondering, and starts feeling.

His hand flutters like a bird at the hem of her shirt, brushing her thigh, making her press into the movement. He lets out the breath he's held, and didn't know it. Lets it out, and grasps the hem, uses it to pull her even closer, until their pressed together, until the spaces between them disappear.

Her eyes are blue and knowing, upturned to capture his in the last vestiges of light. His are green like jade, and she thinks maybe that suits him, because he's something precious to her, and suddenly, she's snaking a hand across the back of his neck, and pulling him down, pulling him under.

Lips brush against each other, tantalizing, tempting, full of sin that was never a sin if it was meant, if it was more than something random, something dirty. And George doesn't care about sin, because he knows he's no savior, no messiah, can never amount to anything more holy than this, this slow, delving of tongues, twisting and dancing and capturing any sin, and transmuting it like alchemy into something more pure than some heated coupling.

His hand presses into the small of her back. It's a big hand, with long fingers, spread wide, and she feels like he's branding her, like that mark of those fingers, hot and demanding, and willing to wait, are making her his, and that some day soon, someone will look at her, and know it. She can't decide if she really minds, too caught up with so _much _of him, the moonlight glancing off the planes of his chest and stomach like he's something ethereal, something meant to be caressed and kissed and loved. So she does. She loves him with every lave of her tongue over the ridges of his stomach, every open mouthed kiss she places on his side, going diagonal across his torso, finally taking his hard nub of a nipple into her mouth, and loving that too – loving it as he moans desperately into her shoulder, kneading the palm of his hand into her lower belly, slowly moving it down, toying with the band of her briefs, inching them off.

"too slow," she groans, her hand on top of his pushing them down her thighs, and letting them fall past her knees, and pool at her feet.

And its all faster now, like something's broken inside them, and passion eddies with every breath, rises with every touch of skin.

Her shirt's gone now, somewhere beside her panties, forgotten, and their still standing, and she thinks if he doesn't take her now, she'll die, just extinguish, snuff out, or her knee's will give out beneath her.

But its ok, because he's lifting her off the ground, setting her on the bed, his hands touching the mounds of her breasts, as he survey's what's his, beneath him. His mouth curls into a small smile, and he lifts himself up, above her, his hands fluttering just above where they should touch and caress and love her, and he's such a tease like this, such a _tease_!

And she needs him now, needs him like she needs to breath, and he's taking too long, leaning on one arm, muscles straining as his other hand busily removes his boxers, and he's there, naked and glorious, and god, such a damn _tease!_

"take me now or lose me forever," she tells him, half joking. His eyes grow cloudy with passion, and the smile fades as he lowers his lips to hers, giving and demanding and its like midas reincarnated, making her feel like everything he touches turns to gold, because it feels so good when he touches her breast like that, flicks her nipple, and brushes the underside, and she's sucking in breath, shuddering, and breaking the kiss, because its almost too much.

She lifts her hips as he plunges into her, like he's diving, and she's water, and there's something golden in that too, in the way their bodies just _fit, _roll together like a current, like a tide, and soon their all a tangle of limbs, all Ivy and tugging and grasping – gasping in pleasure, and its almost too big, and that divide between them, nearly gone, one end bleeds into another, and there is no beginning to this, no end to them, and suddenly –

Suddenly – they're_ there._

Together, and Izzy is gasping between high keening sounds that could almost be screams, because its so good, so right and she feels like silver and gold. George clutches her like she's land and kisses her all over her faces, and just breathes her name, over and over and over, and they milk it until it subsides, until they lay, in a tangle of limbs and bed-sheets like ivy, glistening like gold, perspired, and full to spilling over with something akin to holiness, and both of them know as they fall into the deep recesses of sleep, that this won't happen with anyone else. Its singular, and they're singular.

And maybe they don't have to compromise.


End file.
